Week 23

Wolf pets with Shadow Infusion (from Pack Bond) will now use the power in combat.

Spell bonuses for item attack/defence/damage weren't been applied to the item. Fixed.

Week 22

ending Sunday 1st June

Bug fixes for pantheons.

Week 21

ending Sunday 25th May

The mob AI for war can now play as different factions. The same system now allows you to play different factions in the war tutorial.

Bladed Tail attacks were displaying the cauterise message on a regular hit. Fixed to only display on a critical hit.

Fixed a minor bug which prevented the crystal vortex from unpausing.

Armless forms have hand and arm attacks redirected to their body, but this was being done after checking for the lionskin pelt's invulnerability - meaning that some attacks appeared to damage the body despite the pelt being worn. This has been fixed.

Fixed a potential issue with swimming movement bonuses being uncapped.

Added a 'chaos war' help file.

Leaving a pantheon when you were the only member of that pantheon currently online would cause the pantheon object to be flushed from memory, resulting in a crash when the mud then attempted to update the pantheon's member list. Fixed.

The Road of Seven Sins 'wrath' option no longer counts as a rage if you have ranks in Living Nightmare.

Week 20

ending Sunday 18th May

Flew back from the UK late in the week, caught up on in-game issues but little time for development.

Crystal Devil head warp now gives a vortex which protects vs energy damage in the same way as Shadow Infusion.

Week 19

ending Sunday 11th May

Spent the entire week in the UK, with practically no internet access. No further progress.

Week 18

ending Sunday 4th May

Gave the midair kick attacks innate bypass.

The 'ambush' war command wasn't working, due to the flag being cleared before the attack phase. Fixed.

The Werewolf version of 'Summon Wolf' pet will now use its 'tc' (talons charge) technique, if available.

Innate immunity, armour and auto-absorb for mobs is no longer overridden by shapechanging.

Flew to the UK on the Saturday.

Week 17

ending Sunday 27th April

Added support for help files to be unlocked based on talents. Currently only used for Dragon Hatchling.

Created the mob file for an upgraded Mehktish bladedancer. Also added a Mehktish warlord.

The 'Anointed' task no longer shows up as an explored area.

Week 16

ending Sunday 20th April

You can no longer spam people with the 'induct' command - instead, typing it again within 30 seconds informs you that you've renewed the offer, and doesn't give any further message to the target.

Implemented the Goblinoid war faction.

War attacks that inflict damage are now coloured, so that they aren't so easily missed.

Week 15

ending Sunday 13th April

Harpies no longer target each other (or eggs) when they appear during the Harpy Wood task.

Fixed a bug with the dragon 'summon' command, and added a more generic way of handling power rank requirements for unlocking commands.

Added the required infrastructure for the Lich and Artifacer classes - although they don't yet have any powers or subclasses, nor will they be available for a long time yet. Grulk will be responsible for developing the Artifacer class.

You now take damage from being knocked back into walls.

Fixed the 'arrive' message when arriving back in the Nexus having left a task.

Fixed the various heritage talents to make them unavailable to the Child of the XXX Moon werewolf talents.

The Storm Talons table was displaying a misleading range on the charge tech - fixed.

Typing 'power sphere' on its own wouldn't display anything - fixed it to display all available spheres.

Made a couple of minor bug fixes to the pantheon code.

Week 14

ending Sunday 6th April

Pantheon titles had been marked as alphabetic fields, meaning that those containing spaces were assumed to be corrupted files and therefore discarded. Fixed.

You can no longer induct unclassed players into a pantheon.

Changing your pantheon power now clears spell affects, and removes equipment over your taint/radiation limit (when swapping from a crafting or forging power).

Induct, outcast, promote and demote now update the target's power bonuses.

Adding or swapping spheres now informs the rest of the pantheon, and clears any members' power bonuses that have become invalid.

It is now possible to type 'power sphere <sphere name>' to view all of your class powers that belong to the specified sphere.

You can now type 'pantheon leave' to leave a pantheon - if this takes the pantheon below 0 soul points, all members are stripped off their bonus power. The bonus power can now only be set while on your home plane.

Prettied up the 'slay' message.

Grulk added his first bit of code; typing 'war' on its own now lists which wars are currently running, and who is participating in each.

Week 13

ending Sunday 30th March

Flew back from the UK late on Saturday night, no further progress this week.

Discarded the old 'pantheon' command, and replaced it with a new one that displays information about your pantheon (such as soul points, spheres and members). This command also allows you to select your bonus power.

Changed the regeneration messages for bat form to something more appropriate.

Finally deleted the old (and long unused) power code.

The 'whois' command now shows your pantheon, if any.

Began testing the pantheon code, although currently only admin can found a pantheon. Inducted a number of players to help with the testing.

Flew to the UK on Thursday evening for an Easter break.

Week 11

ending Sunday 16th March

Continued developing the clans (called pantheons for thematic reasons), as follows:

Added a 'found' command, allowing Anointed characters to found a new pantheon. The Anointed task has been designed, but not yet implemented.

Added a 'title' command, allowing the founder to specify a title for his or her pantheon. Without an authorised title, the pantheon members will simply be listed as belonging to "XXX's pantheon", where XXX is the founder's name.

Added an 'authorise' admin command, for authorising (and unauthorising) titles. Note that a title cannot be changed while it is authorised.

Added a 'pantheon' command, which lists all pantheons currently online, along with the name of their founder. The formatting still needs more work.

Added a 'sacrifice' command allowing pantheon members to contribute soul points to the pantheon fund. The number of soul points contributed by each member is stored, as is the total for the pantheon.

Added a 'pantheon' info channel, which works rather like the regular info channel except that it is broadcast to a specific pantheon. This currently uses the same colour as the regular info channel, and cannot be switched off.

Added a 'pray' channel, allowing pantheon members to communicate with each other in the same way as other public channels (including channel history, although this is only stored while at least one pantheon member remains online). This currently uses the same colour as the gossip channel, but has its own config option to switch off.

Added 'induct' and 'ascend' commands for adding new members, available to pantheon members of Lesser God rank or higher. When you offer to induct, the target has 30 seconds to use the 'ascend' command to ascend to the ranks of your pantheon. You automatically become the mentor of those you induct.

Added an 'outcast' command for removing members, available to pantheon members of Lesser God rank or higher. If your pantheon rank is less than Major God, you can only outcast the member if you are their mentor. When you outcast someone, they are refunded all soul points they contributed (you effectively have to buy them out - think of it as owning shares rather than giving donations). If there aren't enough soul points to refund the player, then they can't be outcast. Currently, players cannot choose to outcast themselves.

Added 'promote' and 'demote' commands for promoting and demoting pantheon members. If your pantheon rank is less than Major God, then you can only promote or demote the members you inducted, and they can only be promoted if they've sacrificed enough soul points to cover the cost of their promotion. Major God and above can promote or demote anyone, regardless of how many soul points that member has sacrificed, as long as the pantheon fund can afford it. Note that you can only promote someone to a maximum of one rank below your own, and can only demote those of lower rank than yourself. Not including the founder (who is the Supreme God), each pantheon can have up to 15 members of Minor God rank or higher, of which 5 can be Greater God rank or higher. No pantheon can contain more than 100 total members.

Started adding support for pantheon spheres of influence.

Week 10

ending Sunday 9th March

Clans now load/save, and the clan objects are shared between characters of the same clan.

Added a 'WarAlt' property. If two players (and ONLY two) have the flag and connect from the same IP address, they are not treated as alts for the purposes of the multiplaying attack penalty.

The 'whois' command now shows how long (hours/minutes/seconds) since the player was last online, rather than just the date.

Week 9

ending Sunday 2th March

The 'task' command allowed you to view the help files for tasks you hadn't yet discovered. Fixed.

Tweaked 'mouth' names for the various demon warps.

Fixed some issues with the Rejuvenation spell.

War factions now save.

Transferred the mud to the new server and got everything running (mostly thanks to Grulk).

Put together some more designs for clans and clan settlements.

Week 8

ending Sunday 24th February

Added the Elemental Isle - a set of four tasks which give mage knowledges, as well as epic elemental rings.

Modified some of the body location names for dragons (belly, rump, etc).

Implemented the Chthonic Transfer spell for the Erdgeist knowledge.

Implemented the Nova spell for the Salamander knowledge.

Doubled the Attack/Damage bonuses of the Burning Fury spell.

Offering to sell someone a map now informs them whether or not the map has been completed. The 'buy' command no longer works until at least 3 seconds have passed since the offer was made, to prevent people switching an item just before the other person buys it.

Fixed the admin 'make' command so that it's no longer possible to create non-epic versions of epic items.

Redesigned the layout of the 'epic' command to make it more readable, and to indicate maximum bonuses.

Updated the Tough Hide, Thick Pelt and Rigid Feathers help files to clarify that their armour bonuses apply to the spell layer rather than the natural armour layer.

The whip 'crack' attack no longer works on nests, houses, etc.

Week 7

ending Sunday 17th February

Fixed a nested loop bug resulting in subclass bonus talents not being ignored when dropping other talents (so that valid talents would sometimes be automatically dropped).

Succubus skin warp bonuses were actually being based on the current head warp - fixed.

Fixed a trait bug in the Bearkin Family talent.

Redesigned the dynamic description parsing code, generating at startup two (sorted) tables from the original static lookup table. This section of the code was proving a bottleneck, and was long overdue for some optimisation.

Reactivated Jobo's DNS lookup code, and modified the existing code to support domain names instead of IP addresses where appropriate.

Redesigned the 'user' command to show both domain name and IP address, sorting the users by IP address, indicating suspected alts and listing total unique connections.

Dracolich Spectre now get the Lashing Tail bypass applies to mental and cold.

Updated the Fang Forging help file to clarify how forged items are affected by taint.

Fixed 'talent drop' with cantrips/etc, so that instead of blocking you from changing talents it simply removes your magic mode if you no longer have access to it. Also applied the same to 'train reroll'.

Changed the Frog Fiend tongue attack to only perform a knockdown on a critical hit. Regular hits instead add a tech delay to one or two combat locations.

Implemented an automated 'blocking' system for people who try to guess other players' passwords; 10 total connection failures (or 3 on the same character) result in your IP address being blocked for an hour. A blocked IP address can only connect to characters that last connected from their current IP address.

Week 6

ending Sunday 10th February

You can now type a number after chat, gossip, newbie or tell, to only show the specified number of last messages.

You can no longer start a tutorial war when playing as undead. This will be changed later once the AI can support different factions.

Added a 'faction' help file.

Fixed a couple of typos in combat messages.

Fixed some cosmetic issues with headbutt attacks.

Cleaned up the mud startup sequence.

It's now possible for a power to be boosted by a specified talent, gaining a specified number of bonus ranks.

Talents can now have 'age' as a requirement.

Tidied up the display of personality traits in the talent help files.

Completed Child of the Waning Moon, and implemented Child of the Dark Moon and Child of the Full Moon.

Implemented the six Sign of the XXX Moon talents, where XXX is Black, Blood, Blue, Crescent, Gibbous and Half.

Fixed a bug with the GOT_LEGS check for demons, which checked their arms warp instead of their legs warp.

Week 5

ending Sunday 3rd February

Trying to dismiss a specific card after initiating an attack would ignore your Offence hand, resulting in the misleading message "You don't have any matching resource". Fixed.

Added a 'darting fox' tech for whips.

Implemented the faction system for war, and added an undead faction.

Mystical Blade Mastery now unlocks Assassin Training.

Added support for death messages other than 'slew', and added a handful to get the ball rolling.

Implemented Child of the Full Moon and most of Child of the Waning Moon.

Week 4

ending Sunday 27th January

Switching on 'gossip' now warns you that it is uncensored and may be offensive.

Beginning a task now clears your 'PK safety', if any.

Added an 'eyes' location.

Upgraded whips, improving their lash to strike the eyes on a critical hit, and giving them a crack tech which causes deafness on a critical hit.

Fixed a bug with 'silence' and 'reply'.

Continued working on clans.

Week 3

ending Sunday 20th January

The 'general' war recruit now gives a minimum Offence of 6 instead of 7.

Lowered the stat requirements for the 12 bypass talents to 6/8 for normal/great, and cleaned up their help files.

Fixed a bug in the 'ban' code - it would ban the creation of new characters if ANY of the four octets of their IP address matched one of the banned IP addresses.

You once again get a 30 second fight timer when you enter a dungeon.

Added 'weak' and 'strong' silence modes. Weak silence blocks you from using the newbie channel, and people with both 'chat' and 'gossip' off can't hear you say, whisper or shout, nor can you send them tells. Normal silence also blocks the chat channel. Strong silence means that only those with 'gossip' on can hear you talk or be targeted by your tells.

Added support for admin-only help files, and wrote help files for 'silence' and 'ban'.

Week 2

Change the morning star fumble messages so that they indicate where they hit.

Fixed several typos in mobs' killing blow messages.

Fixed a number of colour issues for sweep messages.

Optimised several sections of older code.

Reworked the scoring system for war, after running several statistical tests following player feedback.

Being silenced now saves. Started adding support for strong and infectious silence modes.

The time in the channel history no longer resets to 00:00:00 after 23:59:59.

Player mounts no longer carry on fighting when you dismount. This may be tweaked in the future to make it more flexible.

The 'config' command is now available when you're dead.

Dracolich Spectre was still getting scaled immunity and armour from Fires of the Volcano. Fixed.

Week 1

ending Sunday 6th January

Flew back from Scotland late on Tuesday night.

Winterland has been deactivated again, now that we're into the New Year.

Performing attacks with dragon talons (via Terrestrial Sigils) while in human form and mounted would describe your mount as the one performing the attacks. Fixed.

Added a 'ban' command to ban specified IP addresses from creating new characters. Note that this doesn't prevent existing characters from logging on - it's not intended as a punishment, but as a means of preventing certain individuals from repeatedly creating offensively named characters to spam the public channels.

Added an Inanimate property (for mobs that don't use any combat techs) and a FlyAway property (for mobs that fly away after killing something). These are primarily intended for future tasks.

Changed the colouring of task descriptions to be more consistent.

Mob data files can now support separate tables for each hand.

Made several cosmetic changes to breath messages.

Added the 'display' option for pscore, but doing so revealed an obscure low-level bug. Temporarily removed the option until the bug can be addressed.

Elemental Scion no longer locks your elemental form when on your home plane (although you can't leave while in the wrong form).